Lyrics: The Streets is Watching
Album: In My Lifetime Vol. 1
Artist: Jay-Z
 
Uh-huh uh huh uh
Gee-gee-geyeah
Baby, watchin, streets
Uh-huh uh huh uh
You don’t have to look
Uh-huh uh
The streets is watching
Check it, check
Uh-huh uh, check

Look, if I shoot you, I’m brainless
But if you shoot me, then you’re famous — what’s a n*gga to do?
When the, streets is watching, blocks keep clocking
Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake
Can’t ignore it, that’s the fastest way to get extorted
But my time is money, at twenty-five, I can’t afford it
Beef is sorted like Godiva, chocolates
N*ggaz you bought it, I pull the slide back and cock it
Plan aborted, you and your mans get a pass
This rhyme, you’re operating on f*ck time
Y’all n*ggaz ain’t worth my shells, all y’all n*ggaz
tryin to do is hurt my sales, and stop trips to John McNale
The type to start a beef then, run to the cops
When I see you in the street got, one in the drop
Would I rather be on tour getting a, hundred a pop
Taking pictures with some b*tches, in front of the drop
The streets is watching

[*chorus*]
When the, streets is watching
Blocks keep clocking
Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake
Can’t ignore it

Now it’s hard not to kill n*ggaz
It’s like a full time job not to kill n*ggaz, can’t chill
the streets is watching you, when you froze your arms
N*ggaz wanna test you and your gun goes warm
Can’t get caught with your feet up, gotta keep your heat up
Sweet n*ggaz running ’round swearing sh*t is sweeter
Once you’re tagged lame the game is follow the leader
Everybody want a piece of your scrilla, so you gotta keep it realer
Kidnap n*ggaz wanna steal ya
Broke n*ggaz want no cash, they just wanna kill ya
for the name, n*ggaz don’t know the rules
Disrespectin the game, want you to blow your cool
Force your hand, of course that man’s plottin
Smarten up, the streets is watching, it’s on

[*chorus*]

My street mentality flip bricks forever, know me and money
we like armed co-defendants, n*gga we stick together
Sh*t whatever for this cheddar ran my game into the ground
Hustle harder to see if indictment time came around
Now you can look up and down the streets and I can’t be found
Put in twenty-four hour shifts but, that ain’t me now
Got a face too easy to trace, n*ggaz mouths got slow leaks
Had to hide between my workers, couldn’t play those streets
She got his face like Mercury you jerkin me? Hectic
Had to call upon my wolves to send, n*ggaz the message
I said this: ‘Let’s play fair and we can stay here
I’m trying to transform you Boyz II Men like daycare’
Hey there’s money to be made and, n*ggaz got the picture
Stopped playing with my paper and, we got richer
Then hard times fell upon us, half of my staff
had warrants, the other half, in the casket lay dormant
I felt like life was cheating me, for the first time
in my life I was getting money but it was like my concious was eating me
Was this a lesson God teaching me? Was he saying that?
I’m playing the game straight from Hell from which few came back
like bad coke, pimp or die, was my mindframe bad
Was n*ggaz thinkin simplify was turning cocaine crack?
Ain’t a whole lot of brain to that, just trying to maintain a stack
and knock a lot like two trains that’s on the same track
‘Fore I get my life together like the oars I bring back
In the bottom of the pot where no, water gets hot
Got my transporter take it ‘cross the border then stop
Set up shop with a quarter of rock, here’s the plan
For three straight weeks, n*ggaz slaughtered the block
But you know the game is ‘lluted, f*cked up me and my dues
One drop can wipe a n*gga out, faster than the cops
and this unstable way of living just, had to stop
Half of my n*ggaz got time, we done real things
By ninety-four became the subject of half of y’all n*ggaz rhymes
Public apoligies to the families of those caught up in my street
But that’s the life for us lost souls brought up in the streets
The life and times of a demonic mind, excited with crime
And the lavish luxuries that just excited my mind
I figured, ‘Sh*t why risk myself I just write it in rhymes
And let you feel me, and if you don’t like it then fine’
The mindstate, of a n*gga who boosted the crime rate
so high in one city they send National Guards to get me
Ya dig?

The streets